Individual attacksGLAD lawyer Mary Bonauto, the Portland, Maine, resident who successfully argued the 2003 Goodridgev. Department of Public Health case that eventually led to marriage equality for Massachusetts residents, describes Gill v. the Office of Personnel Management as "a full-on attack on DOMA section three" — the marriage-definition section, and therefore the one that regulates access to federal benefits for legally married same-sex couples. She clarifies that GLAD's case has nothing to do with who can marry — in Massachusetts, that's well-established fact.

"The only question in our case is how the federal government is treating people who are already married," she said on the phone several weeks after giving her oral argument before Judge Joseph Tauro at the Moakley Courthouse in Boston. (The Coakley case is also being heard by Judge Tauro, in the same courthouse.)

Jonathan Knight and Marlin Nabors are two of those people. The young gay couple — who live in Boston's Hyde Park neighborhood with their Corgi, Peppa — married more than three years ago, and they are plaintiffs in the Gill case. Because they can't file their income taxes jointly, as other married couples can and do, they claim that they've paid about $3000 extra to the US government since 2006.

"I don't think I even had a sense of how the government extends privilege to married couples," says Nabors. Coughing up extra money puts the couple on shakier financial footing, he adds. "It was shocking that we, as a new married couple, aren't able to plan for our future the way that other married couples are."

And while Nabors realizes that, should the case move up through the courts and to the highest level of the judiciary, he and Knight could be a part of history, he's more interested in how his family will be affected.

"We didn't lend our voices to this suit because we were interested in" wielding national influence, he says. "We were interested in being treated fairly. We are overpaying the government when similarly situated couples aren't overpaying the government, and there's an inherent unfairness in that. . . . We're willing to pay our fair share — as long as we know that our marriage is being treated equally by the government."

Other Gill plaintiffs — all Massachusetts residents — include federal employees who can't add their spouses to their health-insurance plans, widowers who are denied Social Security benefits, and a state trooper whose wife wouldn't get federal surviving-spouse benefits if she died in the line of duty.

GLAD argues that, for more than 200 years, marital status was governed by the state, and that DOMA represents an intrusion into state law. That intrusion, in turn, violates equal-protection laws for gay and lesbian couples.

"What DOMA does is negate their marital status — a core part of their identity," Bonauto told the judge.

"In passing DOMA," notes the GLAD complaint, "Congress took the unprecedented step of preemptively nullifying a class of marriages that it expected states would begin to license at some point in the future, that is, marriages of same-sex couples. It withdrew from these marriages, but not from others, all federal financial and other responsibilities and protections.

Courthouse marriage While political analysts understandably regard elections and politicians as the key forces of social change, nongovernmental forces are the ones that most often actually influence and transform our culture.

Jubilation! We can all thank the conservatives who several years ago controlled the state legislature for the fact that Massachusetts citizens have same-sex- marriage rights.

California matters For four years, and 10,000 same-sex nuptials, Massachusetts has had a monopoly on gay marriage in the United States.

Equal rites? New England has made a pretty good case, in recent years, for America's capital of queer.

A deadly move against same-sex marriage Senate president Travaglini has been clear for some time that he opposes same-sex marriage-rights. List of shame: Those who voted to allow a referendum of the right of gays and lesbians to marry

Advocates cite concern on bill for civil unions In the aftermath of Valentine’s Day, leaders of Rhode Island’s same-sex marriage movement are concerned that new legislation could prevent the eventual granting of full marriage rights for gays and lesbians.

Gay marriage debate comes to Maine Even as same-sex marriage supporters across the country reel from the Election Day approval of California's Proposition 8 — which changed that state's constitution to define marriage as between a man and a woman — they are optimistic about bringing gay marriage to Maine, possibly in the upcoming legislative session.

Just like Mitt Don’t you just hate it when Republican Massachusetts governors kowtow to the right wing outside the Commonwealth?

Don't be spooked The move to make gay marriage unconstitutional should haunt people of good will. Oppose the Federal Marriage Amendment? Sign the petition .

Death by handgun A couple of weeks ago, David S. Bernstein wrote about the growing "state sovereignty" movement backed by anti-government conspiracy theorists and gun-rights extremists, and touted on the syndicated radio show and Web site of deranged agitator Alex Jones.

ALL THE WORLD'S A STAGE | July 24, 2014 When three theater companies, all within a one-hour drive of Portland, choose to present the same Shakespeare play on overlapping dates, you have to wonder what about that particular show resonates with this particular moment.

CHECKING IN: THE NEW GUARD AND THE WRITER'S HOTEL | July 11, 2014 Former Mainer Shanna McNair started The New Guard, an independent, multi-genre literary review, in order to exalt the writer, no matter if that writer was well-established or just starting out.

NO TAR SANDS | July 10, 2014 “People’s feelings are clear...they don’t want to be known as the tar sands capitol of the United States."